The Golden Apple
by Padua Burke
Summary: The Goddess of War helps the God of Mischief discover that he really is loved by his father.


**The Golden Apple**

Toying with the idea of writing a AU Thor Fic with a Loki/Sif pairing. Odin also appears in this snippet and is shown with some bonding with Loki. Their relationship is a quiet, broken affair, but it couldn't have been all bad. Just wanted to write something with not a whole lot of angst in it.

-Padua Burke

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Happy Reading.

* * *

The elder son on the All-Father's right began to snore as the three of them sat and waited for the sun to set on Asgard. The son on the left merely rolled his eyes. Loki sat up now as the light began its farewell to the golden city for the day. He had seen the sunset from this balcony many times, but it always proved to be beautiful. The rays of escaping light would always remind him of his beloved mother's tresses, only that...and the young boy started for a moment as the King drew him and his brother close to his sides, his great arms enveloping the two small princes. His dark head whirled up, his green gaze meeting his father's pale blue one. Odin looked upon his second son, and gave him a small smile, his one eye twinkling with pride and love. Little Loki was mesmerized; he couldn't help but give his great father a shy smile in return. It made Odin's face bloom into a rarer than rare grin, and Loki slipped his thin arms around his father's middle, burrowing his face affectionately into his chest. He could feel his father chuckling softly, and Loki took comfort in the strong sound of his heart beating. Odin stroked the boy's raven hair, his fingers lightly touching the nape of the young prince's neck.

Loki would always remember this moment.

His father had looked upon him as though he were precious. Touched him as though he were precious.

As though he could not live without the love of his pale, quiet, strange little son.

* * *

People had a tendency to be suspicious of those who hurried when they themselves were at rest. Especially within this passage of the palace. And so Loki slowed his step into the stateliness befitting royalty, no matter how much he wanted to run the entire length that led to his chambers. He would enter them, close the heavy doors, stride into his private study and...he had to master the swiftness in his steps yet again.

But she was there.

Or at least he hoped that she was.

"Do not hurry," his mind ordered to the tendons in his arms and legs that seemed to be flooded with a foreign eagerness. "If she doesn't happen to be there, you will have just made a fool of yourself."

The Lady Sif, for whatever reason she would not divulge (he had sensed that her person had taken on a legion of bladed secrets; where she retrieved them, he could not say), had now fallen into the habit of spending an hour or two each day within his private study. Ever sense her gruesome battle with the Jotuns months before she had been more inclined to be near him than with anyone else, besides his mother.

She would at times avoid Thor like a curse.

This knowledge alone should have made him happy; out of all of his elder brother's friends, he was envious most of all of Thor's strong bond with the warrior woman. Now it seemed she was undergoing great pains to snap the cords of strength that held their bond together, a new bitterness shining in those golden eyes whenever she would look upon her once favorite companion. Loki noted that he was almost at his destination.

"But why?" he thought furiously. "Why would she exchange his company for mine?"

She used to be predictable, just as Thor and the Warriors Three were. She used to be just another lemming. And now she wasn't.

He nearly breathed a sigh of relief as he gripped the handles of his chamber doors. He shut himself in quickly, and then crossed the space that lay between where he stood and the study.

And there she was.

The doors of the study creaked, and yet Sif, who was laid out on the plush, green couch in the middle of the room, did not stir an inch. It was as though no one had entered. Loki took a moment to study her.

For some time now she had traded in her colors of bright red, cream, and gold for robes and leggings of midnight black, her sashes the hue of blood, the edges and collars of her new clothes adorned with flecks of delicate patterns. Her hair was more often than not left out in a messy fashion, rather than her favored ponytail; on the whole, her new look made her appear...taller, more intimidating.

Feral.

Feral in a way that made his throat close up and a fire to be lit within the center of his chest, burning away everything that he wanted to say. Her hands were folded neatly atop her ribs, the skin beneath her eyes a sickly grey, her mane sprawled across the couch's many pillows. She managed to look both haggard and sturdy. He thought about announcing himself, as he knew she was not asleep, although her eyes were closed, but instead decided to go to his desk and complete an experiment he had been lagging at for the past several days in favor of watching the warrior discreetly when her back was turned.

She barely spoke some days, and yet the trickster found her mere presence profoundly distracting. Her red garments clashed with the sea of green that both cushioned and fled from her. Her loud, steady step broke the silence in with a deafening crunch. Her eyes would transform themselves into liquid amber in the right light.

Loki couldn't take this anymore.

He just had to ask.

"Sif. Why do you come here?" His question carried no spite in it, only a half-desperate wonder. He had to know why she was shunning his brother in favor of him. Why she seemed so desperate to shun the sun and run into the dim lighting of the moon. Still she did not move, trying with all her might to fade into the silence. She was waiting for something. "What is it Sif? What are you waiting for?" his thoughts asked.

"You're quiet." Was she answering his question, or simply making a statement? "You do not pester me with questions about my health or emotions. You do not try to make me feel better. You do not interrupt my training with pleas to be 'myself' again. You do not try to force a smile on my face. That is why I come here." Loki sifted through all that she had said, taking it in.

"If you wish for no one to bother you, than find a place where you can be entirely alone. A place only for yourself."

"Isolation is no lover of mine."

"And yet you loathe the attention of everyone, save for my mother and I."

"Yes."

His brow inched up ever so slightly. He whet his silver tongue with caution. "Perhaps it is not everyone's intention to bother you. They wish for you to be alright."

Not a moment after he said this did Sif's lithe form leap up from the couch, her sudden movement slicing through the air. She heaved a frustrated sigh and set her body in a blundering pacing. Loki feared for his delicate equipment that she whirl winded past, hoping she would not obtain the urge to smash anything.

"Of course they want me to be alright! Why wouldn't they?" Her tone took on a scathing pitch. Sif halted her enraged pacing and set her lethal gaze on him. "I will tell you why they want me to be alright! They want me to return to the way I was before, not because they think that is the best way for me, but because the Sif that lived then did not interrupt the idle routines of their lives! They don't want my problems to dissipate because they harm my heart or spirit! They want them to go so they do not have to feel obliged to help me! They covet their insignificant harmony over my well being! Well then! They can have it! So long as they leave me to my demons and forget me!"

Sif ended this tirade abruptly, squeezing her eyes shut and clenching her jaw so that the words would no longer come. Loki was still seated at his desk, but now remained there in a stunned fashion. He had never heard her speak of such things. She had always been honest, brash in her anger, crass when she drank her fill of mead, but never brandishing a speech with such rage and anguish. He could not help but suspect that she had Thor at the forefront of her mind when she spun her criticisms of the citizens of Asgard.

She was now leaning over the balcony that overlooked his mother's rose garden. Her elbows took her weight as she leaned on them, her face of sharp angles cutting, burrowing into her hands.

And he felt a familiar pain take its seat upon his shoulders.

Her words of others trying to mould her into something that would please them...her frustration at having to suffer without anyone to confide in...her willingness to disappear...all these things...the weary reflection of his heart.

"Sif...," he began, but was interrupted. "I hear that you are to dine tonight with just your family." Loki felt a rigid discomfort at being reminded of tonight's engagement, but was wondering where Sif was going with all this. "Yes. And?" was his reply.

"Do you remember when we were children and I was sometimes invited to dine with both you and Thor in the presence of the All-father and All-mother? You and Thor would race each other all the times I was there to witness the both of you doing it; race each other to have the seat next to Odin. You would win most of the time, save for the moments in which Thor saw fit to push you out of the way." She said this with a soft smile gracing her mouth, and Loki would be content now just to observe her peaceful expression if she didn't talk about the time in which he had actually felt comfortable in being close proximity with his father. Before he was sure he knew who the favored son was.

"Sif..."

"Take your seat beside him tonight."

Loki looked at her as though she had just suggested he strip off all his clothing and run through the gardens with wild abandon. Thor was the one who now sat beside Odin at any private feast; his seat was always beside his mother. Loki made to speak again, but Sif blustered right through his response once more.

"Loki. You always try to make him look on you with pride using all you're grand gestures. He's seen enough of those, being king and what not. Make a smaller, more intimate presentation this time. He will notice, I assure you."

Any empathy he had for her a minute before shrank before his ire. A dozen remarks leapt up to the tip of his tongue, dying to tell Sif that she should mind her own business; that she was no one to tell him how to live his life or how to navigate his distant relationship with his father. He was just about to cut her down with his words when she suddenly turned her back on him, her interest now riveted on a bowl of green apples sitting on a pile of books stacked haphazardly.

His brow throbbed with seething. He was now going through an assortment of animals he could transform her into for invading his emotional privacy. She turned to look at him once more and grinned, but then sobered quickly as she witnessed his features twist into a lethal frostiness.

"Just do it trickster. There is no law in Asgard that prevents you from seating yourself by your father. You don't need to be a buffoon about it. You are his son, Loki. Not his servant."

She said all this with such sincerity in her tone and expression that he held back from uttering the spell that would morph her into a rodent. She bit into an apple, but made a face at its sourness.

Green apples were always her least favorite of them.

Sif nodded her head at him slightly, and made for the balcony once again, hopping up to the edge while swinging her legs over it. She held the apple with her teeth, freeing her hands so that she could use them to balance herself as she jumped to the ground of the gardens below.

Loki got up to watch her leave him and his study for the day. He felt himself become angry with her again as she didn't once turn her head to look up back at him.

* * *

Loki traversed the long hall that ended in their family's private dining chamber. He could hear Thor and his mother speaking a bit farther behind him.

"Right on time," he thought as he schooled his face into its usual placid mask.

Father would already be there waiting for the lot of them. He no idea as to why he was taking Sif's advice in this matter, but...it was as though he couldn't help but go through with this.

No one had ever suggested that he should take his place by his father's side.

No one had ever insinuated that it was his right to do so.

But she had.

As he predicted, Odin stood by the great table, waiting for his family to join him, and upon seeing his second son, he moved to finally take his seat. And Loki, with all the elegance he had spent years in obtaining, for he felt at this moment that without those years he would have tripped over his feet and sent himself sprawling across the floor, smashing his nose into his father's immaculate riding boot, took the chair that sat beside Asgard's king. Not a moment later did the elder prince and his mother stride in, their laughter dying down as they greeted Odin, but then stopped at the sight of Loki already seated beside him. All eyes were on him now, a thread of curiosity binding father, mother, and son at what Loki could be up to now.

Loki took care to ignore how they exchanged the briefest of glances, and so addressed the golden prince before him with a charming, wicked grin. "Forgive me brother," he said as he gestured to his form planted firmly in the chair. "It seems you've moved a tad too slow this time." These were the exact words he used in one of their last attempts at racing one another for the place next to their father during boyhood.

Thor's face broke out into the most genuine smile, for once devoid of arrogance; he too remembered. "You won't beat me next time little brother!" he exclaimed as he took the seat in which Loki usually inhabited.

"We shall see."

The servants entered quietly with their meal, Thor filling the quiet with his useless blathering, Odin and Frigga occasionally dropping a question or remark, when Loki chanced a sideways glance at the king. He nearly froze as he saw his father's pale blue eye peering out at him, shimmering with...pride.

Loki was mesmerized.

He smiled shyly in return.

The All-father chuckled softly as he ate, the sound seeping into the glacial chasms of the younger prince's heart. Warmth tickled at its core.

* * *

He found her in his study pacing thoughtfully this time.

When he tossed the apple to her, her reverie was effectively broken as she fumbled the fruit in her hands, scowling at him once she steadied herself.

His smile in reply was just a tiny bit evil.

Once when they were children (he learned very quickly to never do this again) he had tossed her an apple as he just did now, but before she could even give him her thanks it had transformed into a snake in her hands. Loki could remember dissolving into laughter at the high-pitched screech that issued from her as she threw the creature across the room. His mirth was short-lived then however, as he sustained a black eye and split lip when she caught him. Sif's scowl melted away as she looked down at the fruit again.

It was gold.

An apple of Idunn, her absolute favorite.

She looked at the prince, her expression turning smug. If he attained one of these for her, then the private feast last night with his family must have went better than expected. She held the shining treat before her eyes, admiring its beauty.

"You're welcome, prince." Loki's perfectly groomed brows twitched in irritation at her triumph, but nonetheless she saw gratitude within those emerald depths. She tossed the apple into the air playfully before catching it, giving Loki her loveliest smile to show her happiness at his small gift. He stared like a simpleton, admiring her beauty. She turned to go to the balcony, swinging her legs over the side as she had done the afternoon before.

She was leaving early today; Loki couldn't deter the disappointment that washed over him in that moment.

"Sif," he called. She turned to look at him, poised to leap from the edge, the golden delicacy being held firmly in place by her teeth as with the green apple. "Thank you." He meant it. Sif did not reply, merely jumping off and landing intact.

She sauntered off, looking lazily at the roses, now deigning to indulge her hunger with her prize. She paused for a moment, looking back up at the balcony where the trickster stood watching her. She smiled at him around a mouth full, resembling a goat that stored grass in its cheeks when it grazed.

And Loki laughed.

It was not a devious, calculating sound, but a boyish, gleeful one. Only Sif could manage to look beautiful and stupid all in the same moment. He inwardly hoped that she was just making a fool out of herself down there so as to make him smile.

* * *

"What are you looking at father?"

"The sunset."

Both the king and his younger son stood and watched the day fade into night. He had watched the sun descend in this fashion for centuries, and still he admired it. It was... and he nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt fingers touch at the back of his head.

He turned and found Odin stroking the tips of his raven hair that rested against the nape of his neck. His single eye shone with the soft light of love.

Loki fought back the fierce sting behind his eyes, heralding tears.

He would always remember this moment.


End file.
